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"From the age of eight to sixteen."
"You don't seem like the ballroom dancing type."
"Is there a type?" Tor spun Blythe out and guided her back in.
Their movements weren't competition worthy, but they were good together.
Flushed a lovely pink, Blythe shrugged. "I just would have thought you'd have other hobbies."
"Dancing was never a hobby." No more than any of the things he had to study to be a proper prince had been. "My brother insisted on it as part of my curriculum."
Holger had told Tor that not only would ballroom dancing be a necessary skill for diplomacy, it would also help him in his martial arts training.
Tor's older brother had been right on both counts.
Holger was always right, and if there was a tinge of sardonic bite to Tor's thoughts, no one had to know that.
"Your brother? Not your dad?"
"When my mother died, my father used work to assuage his grief." At least that's what Tor had surmised.
It wasn't as if his father had ever admitted to any emotion, even grief, to his sons.
"So, your brother stepped in?"
"You could say that," he said noncommittally, the tendency to obfuscate now so ingrained, it was his natural response to any question of a personal nature.
"But he was still a child himself."
"Holger was eighteen when our mom died." And he'd seen how dismayed his eight-year-old brother had been at the effective loss of both his parents in one fell swoop. "He did not think of himself as a child, but a fully grown man."
Being raised as a prince, with the weight of the country on their shoulders, none of them had wallowed in childhood. Had there been play? Certainly, but always with a purpose. To teach Tor and his brothers strategy and diplomacy, etc.
"I never realized King Holger was more like a father than a brother to you." Blythe wore her compassion like he'd once worn a school uniform. No mistaking it for anything else. "Janice always talks about you like a good friend."
"She and I have become friends." Unlike his brothers or father, Janne texted him randomly.
She made time in her schedule to hang out. Even though it was his brother she was marrying, she'd made an effort to get to know the entire royal family personally.
"My brother is, and has always been, my brother." And his sovereign for the past 8 years.
When their father's health had forced him to abdicate the throne, Holger had been crowned their king and the new monarch had no longer had time to take a personal interest in his teenage brother's life.
At fourteen, Tor became the first prince in Tapt Oyer' history to be sent to boarding school.
His arguments against it were dismissed as a youthful lack of understanding of what was best for him. The only argument he won was to be sent to New York, rather than England to school. He'd spent time there every summer with the relatives descended from his great uncle.
But Else had been there two and if Tor couldn't be near his family, he wanted to be near his friend.
He had missed his family at first, but he'd learned to do without them.
Tor had drawn further away from the brothers and father he no longer trusted and had followed up his boarding school years with attending university in the States as well.
He no longer believed the old adage: Når problemer kommer, er det familien din som støtter deg. When trouble comes, it's your family that supports you. But he still firmly adhered to Du må forsvare din ære. Og din familie. You have to defend your honor. And your family.
Tor was still Holger's brother. Their relationship might be distant now, but they were still family.
Blythe looked at him musingly. "I suppose your dad stepped back into the parental role after he abdicated the throne."
